To feel sorry for Ed Sheeran.....

When have I ever said that? First there were the Jews. Along came Christ and a lot of the Jews became Christian. Along came Mohammed and then a lot of the Jews and Christians became Muslims. All in the name of so called prophets believing in the same invisible man in the sky but at the same time at each others throats. That is the fundamental problem.

Have you heard of Jesus Christ,King of the Jews who was living there all those years ago? Or Jesus of Nazareth? He was King of the Jews which means a significant number of Jews were living there, which you seem to think is fiction.

Because it's their home and has been for centuries. Same reason Inuits want to live in Alaska.

Maybe Hamas will name one of their tunnels after that rapper. Can't even remember his name.

Why do Arabs want it is my question?

His bank balance proves that he is indeed “some people’s idea of a musician” though not everyone likes his music of course.

This is worth a listen: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14tGjLPNDYB/

Rory Stewart giving a potted background to how the middle east has reached this point.

I am with Ed - I think he has handled this in the only way open to him.

In 1947, Jews owned 6% to 7% of the total land, some of it bought from rich absentee landlords from areas like the Levant who had bought the land from the Ottomans and some of it, like Givet Shaul, was bought honestly from the Palestinians in Deir Yassin. What does the geography or terrain have to do with land ownership.

What is called Israel today was swampland, deserts and difficult to defend lowlands. Most of it was owned by absentee landlords who sold up to Jews.

Unlike you I can’t tell the future but I feel pretty confident that no Israeli administration in the foreseeable future will resort to hunting down and murdering its political opponents like Hamas did after Gaza’s one and only democratic election more than 2 decades ago.

My comment was deleted because it was directed at someone else which I suspected was going to be borderline. I have no problem with it.

Your comments were deleted . I guess MN recognised they were inflammatory .
I was just calling you out on your comments.

Perhaps that is what you thought you were saying in your own head but that is not what you wrote down.

No I asked you about your empathy for Israelis and you answered with a but.
I didn’t make assertions about your character. You revealed your character with your own words.

You didn't ask me anything. You made assertions about my character. You are now accusing me of using mn guidelines to manipulate arguments. I can assure you, I don't need to. I have said a hundred times on here that I would like to see Israelis and Palestinians living side by side with equal rights. I have also stated numerous times that I despise all governments that define themselves by a religion, not just theocracies. At the moment, as it stands, Israel may not be a theocracy but by its own laws, it is an ethnosupremacy.

Its unhelpful to demand everyone have an opinion on everything and to share it.

His position is really nobody else's business.

Keeping one's views to oneself should be celebrated more. Maybe there would be far less anger and division.

On a side note, surely we can all that agree killing human beings is not okay? Regardless of who is doing it. I may be missing something.

Israel was subjected to horrific acts terrorists AND they have done horrific things to innocent people. Both can be true. It doesn't minimise or negate either side.

I have literally no idea what your second paragraph is about.

But we'll just agree that Israel won't stop killing Palestinians in the near future . Justifying or not it's still the facts.

And the IDF solider was killed by a Hezbollah drone not Palestinians try looking at more than a headline .

Where exactly do you think I stand?

And they haven’t stopped killing Israelis either - they are simply being prevented at the moment by IDF actions, some of which have also killed Gazan civilians.
But that’s urban warfare, and Palestinians are still attacking Israelis whenever they can:
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/defense/artc-idf-soldier-killed-and-2-wounded-during-operation-in-northern-israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-september-20-2026/#liveblog-entry-3900287

This is all as a result of Hamas’ decision to use the billions they got in international aid over the years to attack Israel instead of making a decent life for its citizens. Indeed the people calling this a genocide complain that Netanyahu let aid in from Qatar as though that were evidence that he wanted Oct 7th to happen, instead of seeing that the Hope was that Hamas would be just another government with whom it would eventually be possible to have peace. Like Egypt and Jordan, with whom they also fought deadly wars over disputed territory, and yet they didn’t attack them - because they didn’t attack Israel since.

I and at least some others on here are interested in achieving both. Good to know explicitly where you stand.

Do you not see the irony of that statement. Who do the UN have to protect the civilians from?

There are Hamas leaders saying on TV interviews that the tunnels are for the soldiers, not the civilians, and that it’s up to the UN to protect the civilians.

Ok so Palestinians stopping killing Israelis is not a reason for Israelis to stop killing Palestinians.

You should have just said that you would have saved a lot of words.

(Oh and the children weren't a military sacrifice, Israel targeted them,there's a whole UN commission enquiry report on it be warned its a rough read )

There was an invasion and a war as a result. The side that lost - choosing to sacrifice their own children as a military strategy - are still causing problems in various ways (you asked about rockets from Gaza as though that were the only possible problem: the IDF also has to ensure that Hamas don’t just lie low for a couple of years to rebuild and then go again, as indeed they promised to do).

So the idea that because no rockets have been fired for the last few months given that they’d been firing them for 20 years, and have only stopped now temporarily because the IDF is present in Gaza preventing them from setting the rockets up again is either stupid or dishonest.

I wouldn’t dream of reading your mind and identifying which. But it definitely makes no sense.